About

A writer of grievously-unfulfilled potential, Joe Shirley has bounced around various strata of sports media as both gamekeeper and poacher, from league office press departments to being out in the cold as a struggling freelance.

The pinnacle was his time as in-house hack for a Premier League football club, when his once-in-a-lifetime chance to scoop the nationals was denied him, because embarrassing UEFA would have meant embarrassing his bosses.

The nadir is now: writing for a national magazine on a minority sport so unsexy, he has developed an unconscious habit of publicly speaking its name in a very soft voice. He looks forward to going to work every day but acknowledges that this does not a thrusting career make.

As his current employer resents moonlighting, no matter how unpaid or uncompetitive, Joe Shirley is not the writer’s real name, but at least you now know his parents’ real names.